Edward John Newell
Edward John Newell (1771–1798), was an Irish sailor, glazier, artist, and portrait painter, notorious for his role as a government informer during the political turmoil of the 1790s.
[2] For about one year, Newell was at sea; he later described some of the hardships of that experience, including "a most dreadful storm" and living for six weeks "on raw meat, lying in wet clothes, and constantly working at our pumps.
[13] Newell neglected his business due to his over-enthusiasm for the United Irishmen, and he quickly began to raise the movement leaders' suspicions.
His younger brother, Robert (not a United Irishman), described Newell as being "in the practice of going through the town of Belfast disguised in the dress of a light horseman, with his face blackened and accompanied by a guard of soldiers, pointing out certain individuals who have in consequence been immediately apprehended and put in prison".
However, Newell's 1843 biographer, Madden, wrote that "he betrayed the secrets of the United Irish Society professedly to prevent the murder of an exciseman named Murdock".
Newell was examined by a secret committee of the Irish House of Commons[16] in early 1797, where he was put on a high chair in order to be heard better by his audience.
Among "Other Stories and pictures of '98", the Mourne Observer reproduces "a miniature of Betsy Gray" which was attributed (possibly apocryphally)[18] to "Newell of Downpatrick".
It was reproduced from a painting by a man called Newell of Downpatrick, who posed as a United Irishman prior to 1798, but who was, in fact, in the pay of the Government.According to a number of published accounts (some contemporary) and to popular ballads, Elizabeth, "Betsy" or "Bessie" Gray, was the daughter of a County Down Presbyterian farmer, and a "wondrous beauty" (the "Pride of Down"), killed by government Yeomanry following the rout of the United Irish host a Ballynahinch.
She is depicted as riding into the fray carrying the green rebel flag, and being subsequently executed by "Yeos" (her "glove hand" severed, and shot through the head) alongside her brother George and "her sweetheart, Willie Boal".
In the years that followed "a rough map representing the battle scene" with Gray "mounted on a pony and bearing a green flag" was reportedly "seen hanging in many a cottage".
Twelve days later, Newell found that a ship that would take him to America was nearby on the Lough, so he wrote to George Murdoch telling him his wife's whereabouts and of her decision to return to him.
[23] Madden records that around 1828, partly uncovered human bones that are said to be of Edward John Newell were found on the beach of Ballyholme, Bangor, County Down, indicating that he drowned there.
